Drew Faust on John Hope Franklin and 'Historians to the Rescue'

Historian Drew Gilpin Faust opened the Centennial Symposium honoring John Hope Franklin by praising the legacy he left for activists and scholars and for research “that rescued us from bad history.”

“John Hope Franklin wrote history—discovering neglected and forgotten dimensions of the past, mining archives with creativity and care, building in the course of his career a changed narrative of the American experience and the meaning of race within it,” said Faust, president of Harvard University. 

She delivered the opening keynote address at the Nasher Museum of Art for the symposium, “Global Slaveries|Impossible Freedoms: The Intellectual Legacies of John Hope Franklin,” which continues through Saturday. 

“But John Hope also meditated about history and its place in the world, on its role as action as well as description, on history itself as causal agent and on the writing of history as mission as well as profession.” 

Faust said it was a positive sign that America, in 2015, seems “to be undertaking an unprecedentedly clear-eyed look at the nation’s past, at the legacy of slavery and race that have made us anything but a colorblind society.” She said this would be a most fitting tribute to Franklin’s legacy. ...